with dolls and laces
by HopelessOsaka
Summary: Riza Hawkeye, first lieutenant, and five studies on being a woman that she is. [Riza and Winry]


**Disclaimer:** (Herbal) Osaka-neechan does not own Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi).

**Author:** (Herbal) Osaka-neechan

**Characters:** Riza Hawkeye, Winry Rockbell

**Pairings:** Winry+Riza

**Time period:** Undefined, after the series and movie, over a period, suggested alternated universe

**Content warning:** Can be taken as shoujo-ai (light YURI, meaning girl+girl) or a general piece

**Storyline warning:** Alternated Universe, suggestive character death, study on women, psychological barriers, and mental doubts

**Summary:** Riza Hawkeye, first lieutenant, and five studies on being a woman that she is.

**Point of view:** Riza Hawkeye

**Person point of view:** Third person, present progressive (someone can prove me wrong, otherwise)

_The conceptual corner:_ Osaka-neechan redid her earlier With Dolls and Laces that was never finished, and combined some ideas in whole—the last attempt was a bit more grounded, however. Sentences are short, clipped, and may or may not be direct to the point. The raw concept behind this piece was an introspective on Riza Hawkeye, though this piece obviously does not explain much, and only the first two were truly introspective. But Osaka-nee was elated just making a piece for Hawkeye, because this first lieutenant is awesome like that. The entire piece took a turn for the peculiar, though. Yeah— ›.›;;

_The reception corner:_ "Don't get your panties in a bunch." Just what this one-shot needs. "With Dolls and Laces" took quite a twist when Osaka-neechan decided redoing the previous piece, and accidentally stuck Winry in here. Well, from then on, this one-shot assumes much, and can be safely labeled _alternated from the series' regular universe_. This can suggest character death, and _shoujo-ai_—is Winry with Riza, or Riza with Winry? Why, and for how long? Osaka-nee has no idea—the piece is extremely vague in those terms. As stated earlier, this is all a raw essence, containing Riza Hawkeye and Winry Rockbell, and Osaka-nee also cannot be sure if anything was learned, or can be learned, from this piece. o.O;;

_The froggy corner:_ Sometimes—in war and everything else—the best man for the job is a woman." – Monstrous Regiment, an American print, by _Terry Pratchett_, from the Discworld series

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**WITH DOLLS AND LACES**

Short  


**Watches in Women's Pockets**

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1. **Dress**

Absentminded, Riza cups her hands beneath her breasts, and stares. There is a figure who stares back, a young woman—

—and, suddenly, as if she recalls who she is—Riza laughs. Her voice is low, but there is, she hears when she turns, a choke. Riza spins, then goes for another, and for an instant she sees, slipping by, somebody come close, touch her shoulders.

Riza swallows, teeth stabbing a goosy bottom lip. She stumbles—persian-indigo high heels click, repeat, go forward, and her forehead touches a chilly mirror surface. She attempts a breath, but curses—realizing, the body goes stationary—before another curse rips at air.

There is motion, shadows circle orche-floorboards. _Goddamn. Goddamn. _she curses, in a hunch, arms clutching her stomach protectively. _Goddamn, goddamn._ she chants. Nobody should see—nobody should see her here, _like this_, like she was—was helpless. Hands grip, flex, but there is no gun. She cannot play pretend-soldier.

"Miss Riza," someone calls, uncertain.

"Goddamn," she says, again, and does not notice Winry clench her left knuckles, lips pursing, robin egg irises calm, steady. Riza rises, stands straight, while her breaths even. Then she walks, a military rhythm—rushes. Persian-indigo high heels slam against wall-corners, near-corners, leave marks—Winry does not cringe, only lets her nails dig in above her knuckles.

Riza screams. She screams, and cries. Frustrations soak in pillows.

_God_**damn**. she thinks. Riza Hawkeye lay on her bed, negligent, in a dress. She cries, but laughs, and laughs some more, arms shaky as she hauls her body.

"A wife," she says, "a wife."

Winry stares, then, laughs as well. They laugh, boyishly.

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2. **Doll**

Riza fears dolls.

Not all dolls. Glass dolls—those dolls, which were chalkier than a moon on water, dolls who sat, immobile in their smile, in their stare, in their being frigid and without touch. Dolls too plasticy—those dolls, in commercialism, those that would share a common standing in anorexia, fake smiles, blank looks.

Mother gave her these.

_She sits there, by their coffee table, and stares for awhile. Her mother looks similar—her rosy lips, foundation on her cheeks, glimmering eyes that spoke nothing—her mother looks similar, to her doll._

_She sits awhile, thinking this. _

_Then, she throws her doll._

_There is reaction—her father yells in bewilderment, maids jump, hands on their mouths, their butlers harden jaws—the younger twitches, the older goes stock still. Her mother blinks, her rosy lips thin, do not wilt._

_Riza stands, then bolts._

_Her father is speechless, for once, at first, before he stalks after her, still unsure. Her mother sits, immobile. Then she gathers plates, startling the maid cleaning spilt tea. Staff watch, hear glass crash against the sink._

"Look, Miss Riza," Winry insists. "This is from Xing."

They are in her room. The young woman brushes her fingers over larger, coarser palms. Riza exhales. She was twenty-one, this girl; a future rests on smooth, agile fingers that did not weaken, throb some nights.

There is a doll left on her stretched palm. Her breath hitches; left fingers caress cloth.

Taupe skin, short, black hair, a pink summer dress, large, round patches that are vacuous, and thread stitched in for a mouth. Cloth makes this doll, this sad, blank doll.

This doll speaks life.

Riza relaxes, lets warmth seep through.

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3. **Birth**

"You want a baby?" asks Winry, her hands on an ardent, flat stomach, wearing a shirt—buttons on pin-stripes, wrinkles from an earlier wash—her mother's—bloats, settles, bloats, settles—repeats.

"Some women," Winry says, "some women do not want their babies. Some women want a baby more than anything."

Riza gazes off at a distance, at a photograph, framed and mounted. There is a flash—lightning splits air—rain thunders against windowpanes.

"I suppose," Riza says, slowly. She thinks, in a manner too guarded, steely, that no incision could be made.

"A little girl," Winry hums. Her index and forefinger wrap blonde hair. Minutes pass by.

Winry wavers, sighs. Nearly cautious, she lays her head down on that flat stomach. Breath whistles, her countenance turning wistful.

"Mothers want protection for their children," Winry says.

She falls silent; the rain goes on. Riza rocks back, forth, on the plush chair.

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4. **Funereal**

"Ed, and the colonel…" They walk, in an amble, on a day the clouds are adrift in summery skies, clouds children would imagine shapes from. Grass swims as winds dance, and billow at their shoelaces, their skirts, blouses.

Winry stops right before the graves begin, and turns around, nearly in a girlish manner. "All my childhood dreams are ruined," Winry says, feigning woe. —But she holds some true remorse beneath closed eyelids and puckered lips, Riza notices faintly.

"Perhaps mine, too," she admits, wearing a smile that underlines melancholia.

Winry pauses, then turns back, her umber orange skirt a rolling, foaming sea-wave. Her shadows are cast on the grass, but do not sway in rhythm as everything else.

"That is not fair." she tells no tombstone in particular. "Why should I let men take my girlhood from me, anyhow?"

Restless as those winds that wound as snakes in sand, Winry turns for a last time that day. Riza stays, neutral, and thinks. Winry stares at summery skies, and drifts from there, becoming a breeze faster than clouds.

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5. **Dutiful**

_Rain will come; the fall is here._ Hawkeye dually thinks. Military is military—no matter its stance in power.

Her skin is numb. Winry touches her fingers, longer, bonier fingers, but they retract.

Old Den sits there, outside—sits and watches, sclera filmy, irises stony. He has not turned for awhile, his elderly eyesight intent on the road that lay ahead. He has not left his post, as if he grew from roots on that spot.

_Stay alive,_ Riza says, to someone.

How old is she? Riza wonders. Winry is a woman, and she is—she is in her thirties? She thinks over Ed, over Roy. Al will be there. She wants—rather desperately—to clasp his hands, and not let go for awhile—to observe those fingers without gloves, to read his calluses, to read stitches that make his palms—to come back, cup her sun-dry hands on soft, rounded cheeks, and tell a story.

The air is lifeless, heavy.

Riza turns. Winry steps.

Arms engulf her—and, for minutes, they stay like this—until those minutes were too many more.

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**END**

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End file.
